How you feel about sand largely depends on its location. Sand on the beach, the best! Sand in your luggage, laundry and car, not so great. Having made my annual pilgrimage to the coast, sand is on my mind. A run through the Scriptures gives interesting sand imagery that may make you think differently, unless of course you’re still finding last trip’s sand in places you don’t wish it to be. Sand imagery plays a significant role in the redemptive actions of God towards his children.
Perhaps you are familiar with God’s promise to childless Abraham? God says that he will “multiply his offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore…which cannot be numbered for multitude”. (Genesis 22 & 32) Anticipating this future blessing, God changes his name from singular Abram to plural Abraham, meaning no longer father but father of many (Genesis 17). He and his wife Sarah, according to the writer of Hebrews, were respectively “good as dead” and “past the age”, yet born to them were “descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”
A few generations later, Joseph’s jealous brothers sold him to a caravan of enemy Ishmaelite traders (Genesis 37) because they were unhappy with Jacob’s fatherly favoritism of the young dreamer. What we don’t know until later is that a severe famine was coming that would threaten the offspring of Abraham. What we also don’t know is that God is using hardships for the everlasting good of his people (Romans 8). Jealousy and strife, temptation and prison, foresight and stewardship led Joseph to store “grain in great abundance, like the sand of the sea, until he ceased to measure it, for it could not be measured”. (Genesis 41) Israel and Egypt were fed through a severe famine that lasted several years. God’s people remained in Egypt until the day he led them out in great numbers to the Promised Land (Psalm 105).
Several generations along, King David says wonderful things in Psalm 139 about God’s personal care for him in every age and stage of his own life. Christians love this Psalm for its pro-life themes (verses 13-16). When pondering God’s personal thoughts, concerns, and actions on his behalf, he says, “If I would count them, they are more than the sand.” David was a long-time shepherd in the wilderness and a warrior-king for decades. God’s specific thoughts and care were no doubt many.
When Solomon took the throne after his father David’s death, “Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea.” (1 Kings 4) God’s promise to Abraham was finding fulfillment in offspring and a promised land with a king, wide borders, prospering people, a magnificent temple, and other nations coming for a look-see (I Kings 10). Solomon was wise and had considerable understanding. He had prayed for this and he had “breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore.”
By the time of the birth of Jesus, forty-two generations are named since Father Abraham received that promise. Ups and downs and threats to the promises of God had been experienced – disobedience, exile, foreign occupations, and genocide. God’s church on earth has been growing since Pentecost (Acts 2) with those who are Abraham’s offspring in Christ (Galatians 3). Several places in the book of Revelation speak of multitudes of those who put their faith in Abraham’s God worshipping around the throne of heaven.
A bit of sanctified imagination leads us to wonder that as “the sands of time are sinking” and heaven is filling up with glorified souls, God nudges Father Abraham and says, “Sand!”